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Right now, the choice is between a candidate who hasn't accomplished everything she wanted, but has nevertheless done better than her detractors say, and a mini-Trump who would do to Oregon what he's done to the country. Given these options, I will happily and enthusiastically vote for Kotek again.

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Hey, I never claimed every program established by every bill she signed was a roaring success. Yes, there have been problems with implementation in some cases. But the solution isn't what Drazan would do: Burn it all to the ground, while making life hell for women and minorities.

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Since my day job is software development, I had to use it for a while. But prices skyrocketed and we locked down usage. Since then, I completely stopped using it. No one has gotten angry at me about it yet.

She also has the benefit of not being a Trump hand-puppet, like Drazan. On the big issues, she's firmly in alignment with Oregon values, such as keeping our land and waterways clean, supporting unions, supporting the right to choose, and supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ Oregonians.

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It's huge. Like, *shockingly* huge. A lot of them are targeted towards areas where their effects may not be obvious to the greater public, like getting mentally ill people through the courts and into the hospital system more efficiently, but the impact they have is real and positive.

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I could go on and on. Everything I mentioned above was only in 2025. Kotek is actually a *terrible* campaigner in some ways, since she doesn't toot her own horn or talk loudly about her accomplishments. So people don't think she has very many. But the list of actual, substantive bills she's signed?

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She signed a similar bill for nonprofits building low-income housing. She signed a bill directing the Oregon Investment Council to take action protecting Public Employees Retirement Fund from being impacted by the risks of climate change. (She accepts the science that climate change is real.)

She signed a bill extending taxes on forest products from Oregon forestlands. These are important taxes that help fund Oregon land management. She signed a bill extending the sunset date for partial tax exemptions on vertical housing development projects.

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Speaking of mental health, she signed a bill creating a new division of the Oregon Health Authority empowered to study and act on behavioral health problems, and funding behavioral health treatment programs for Oregonians. She signed two separate bills in support of community microgrids.

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She signed a bill defining outpatient treatment for drug and alcohol addiction as mental health treatment for the purposes of insurance coverage. (Previously, coverage for outpatient treatment could be denied.)

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She signed a bill addressing flaws in the reporting system for groundwater problems. She signed a bill prohibiting data process controllers from processing data for kids under 16 for targeted advertising. She signed a bill to improve access to the Oregon Health Plan for poor families.

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She signed a bill prohibiting disqualification for unemployment funds if the unemployment is due to a labor dispute. (She's pro-union.) She signed a bill addressing how the courts process people with serious mental illnesses, which previously caused delays in getting them into the OSH system.

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OK. She's the first governor to actually put real money towards the housing crisis here. Specifically, $376 million. It's not enough, but it was a good first step. She signed a bill prohibiting pharmaceutical companies from interfering with the 340B drug program, which helps low-income families.

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Watching the debate between Kotek and Drazan is giving me real hope for Oregon. Kotek is kicking Drazan's crazy ass.

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I want to see this last a long time. I'd like Trump to start getting desperate for cameras after "Trump TV" crashes out (and gets ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS). I'd like the press to just never broadcast audio recordings of him again. Starve that monster of the attention it craves.

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Assuming this country survives the second Trump regime, there need to be trials and long prison sentences for everyone involved in these crimes.

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Three nights in a row of stress dreams. Dreaming about being back in school and forgetting I have a test. About being unemployed. About being picked up by the police. I'm thinking the current state of the world and the economy has me a teensy bit stressed out.

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Ahh man, bummer. Sorry to hear that. The economy's really hurting from this garbage.

Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Yup. Very frustrating. We're watching the economy do exactly what it did with NFTs, crypto, the housing bubble, Enron... It's like we never freaking *learn*!

Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

(2/2) Stop investing in them! Their whole goal is to leave you holding the bag for their unprofitable AI business! Serving up LLMs is a very efficient way to set money on fire, and that's all it will ever be. SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI... Not ONE of them has a realistic chance at profitability.

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

(1/2) What the heck is wrong with the people buying SpaceX stock again? Haven't they learned their lesson? Today's earnings announcement said they earned $7.8 billion in revenue. It exceeded analysts' expectations and sounds like a lot until you realize xAI lost $15.8 billion.

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You're missing the point. Hank Green is a notable science educator. He's built a solid rep as a guy who meticulously researches the subjects he talks about. The "drama" is in the fact that a lot of people who trusted him based on that rep feel they can't anymore, which sucks because they like him.

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That's not the only ethical issue. LLMs are trained via plagiarism on a previously impossible scale. The people offering the frontier models are morally bankrupt and shouldn't be supported in any way. And anything produced by them can't be trusted since it could be a hallucination.

Yes, I'm aware. But watching the video, I'm not sure his explanations are very credible. It's really stretching believability to claim the "pushback" quote is in response to something, especially since it's not clear what exactly it would be a response to.

Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Okay, another update: I went back in the video to watch the segment before the "Future Hank" segment to see if his explanation was plausible. It's... borderline. There are a few things Soupytime says that could possibly be the "pushback" he's referring to. But I'm very skeptical.

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Okay, I've watched the video that triggered this drama. Sadly, it's apparent he used AI for more than just notes. He was reading from a ChatGPT script, and accidentally read out loud something the chatbot had included as an aside.

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I mean, good for him for recognizing he's got a problem, and I hope he fully recovers. But I have to wonder, given the horrific ethical and environmental problems with AI (assuming he's been using "frontier" models and not self-hosting his own artisanal ones), why did he even start?

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Wait, what? Noooo! Say it ain't so!

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Oh look, there's the Friday stock market manipulation.

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Hopefully sooner than that. His whole cabinet needs to be removed.

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

It's like declaring yourself a pastry chef because you picked up a scone at Starbucks.

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

* Donald Trump is a pedophile, a rapist, a con artist, a cult leader, and a mafia boss. * We have one planet. Destroying it in service of oligarchs is a bad idea. * We're in an economic bubble that dwarfs the dot-com bubble. The sooner it collapses, the better. * Truth still matters. (3/3)

Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

* Mamdani is doing a really good job in NYC. Republicans (and establishment Dems) hate that. * Mitch McConnell is either deceased or so thoroughly incapacitated that he's not capable of doing his job. * Sales taxes are regressive. The wealthy should pay more income tax instead. (2/3)

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Here are some random things I just really needed to get off my chest. * The 2020 election wasn't stolen. * Using AI chat bots isn't research. * Speaking of, the bots are harmful economically, environmentally, and psychologically to the people who are addicted to them. (1/3)

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I can also confirm that Seattle is still NOT on fire.

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Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I can confirm that Portland is still NOT on fire.

Damon Kaswell @dekoding.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

If you're in a weird mood and want to see a bunch of people rapidly dissociating from reality, now is a great time to look at LinkedIn.

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Yeah, it's pretty bad. But there's a silver lining: A bunch of existing open-source projects are actively banning contributions that are obviously AI slop. And if Claude is polite enough to sign that slop, it makes banning the account easier.

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Oh, you have no idea. GitHub has become a wasteland of vibe coders who don't know the difference between signed and unsigned INTs. (Despite it being RIGHT THERE in the names.) Claude commits, repos full of MD prompt files, and mountains of abandoned projects. That's all you'll find there now.

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I'm waiting for the day when economic reality catches up to Anthropic. Once they've collapsed, those commits will be a really weird historical record.

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